I will probably riff off this design. I have some fuzzy acrylic yarn-- the baby boy hates the itchies of any flavor of wool. That will be the body. I love love love the face, though!

11/5 - cast on and discarded 5 old acrylic stash balls of yarn. So spoiled am I! Alpaca and silk and the Berroco yarn which seems yummy in spite of itself. Smaug will be red with a yellow belly, because, as we all know, bullies are cowards. ;-) I have some orange kid silk haze I’ll press into service as the flames. I may do color work on the belly with the black and yellow- haven’t decided.

11/6 - Color work is stripes with the yellow and red. The yellow is in reverse stockinette, and the red is in stockinette, so that the yellow looks scaly and the red is ribby. It’s nice. :-) I didn’t sort out until the 3rd or so stripe how to avoid purl bumps. This is knitting on a deadline, though-- 14 days til his birthday!! So I didn’t rip back.

11/12 - I’m now pretty comfy that I will have this done in time. Finally posted progress pictures. I am doing the back of the dragon in chevrons of garter and reverse stockinette that are wider than the original. I think the reverse stockinette looks more scaly.

11/19 - Finished! Love it.

last notes:

The stomach was done in repeats like this:

color 1 (gold):
row 1: K
row 2 (ws): K
row 3: P
row 4 (ws): K

change to color 2 (red):
row 5: K
row 6: P

That allows for 4/6 rows to be knitted, rather than purled. :-)

The tail was done with short rows. I worked decreases on the belly side until it was a single stitch, which I pulled a yarn tail through to bind off. Then worked the back/red side in the round for a few rows, before folding it in half on two dpn’s, and k2tog with one stitch from each needle to close the tube and half the width of the work. I knit garter stitch for 8 or so rows, then shifted the stitches off on a holder, and cast on about 20 stitches, knit back and picked up 2 stitches from the holder to begin short rows, then kfb’d to the end, knit back, picked up 2 stitches, kfb’d, etc until the bind-off row.

If anyone wants clearer explanations, feel free to email me. :-)